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Federal Judge to Take On New Role

For just over four years Raymond J. Dearie has made decisions, issued rulings and handed down sentences as the chief judge for the federal court in the Eastern District of New York, which includes Brooklyn, Queens, Staten Island and Long Island and is one of the busier districts in the country.

This week, Judge Dearie, 66, ceded his role as chief judge to Carol B. Amon, who will be the first woman to serve as the district’s chief judge. Judge Dearie will, however, continue to hear cases inside the Theodore Roosevelt Federal courthouse in Brooklyn Heights as a senior judge.

Though Judge Dearie remains a few years shy of 70, the age at which a chief judge must give up the post, his new role will come with certain perks: He will get to serve stints on the bench at other federal courts around the country, and he will receive his salary as a pension, which comes with tax benefits.

“I enjoyed being chief far more than I ever expected to,” Judge Dearie said this week in an interview. “It was, for the most part, a lot of fun, a real privilege to represent your colleagues.”

As a senior judge, he will have more control over his caseload, but he plans to keep as busy as ever.

In addition to handling trials, the chief judge in a federal district plays a variety of additional roles that require the skills of an administrator, of a financial manager and, occasionally of a diplomat. The powers enjoyed by chief judges, who can serve in the role for no more than seven years, are wide-ranging and the limits on their authority are few. They monitor the caseloads of colleagues, supervise probation officers and ensure that court rules and procedures are followed. They also mediate disputes within the courthouse and make decisions about extrajudicial matters like budgets and construction plans.

Judge Dearie, who graduated from St. John’s University School of Law in 1969, said it was time to move on because of the appeal of the tax benefits and because he wanted to sit in other districts. In May, he will sit on the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, which serves seven states on the West Coast and has courthouses in California, Oregon and Washington. And in the summer, he said, he will sit in federal district court in Arizona.

His legal legacy, though, will most likely be defined by his work in Brooklyn, where he started work as a federal prosecutor in 1971 and, after a three-year period in private practice, was named United States attorney for the Eastern District in 1982. He was appointed to the federal bench in 1986 by President Ronald Reagan.

He has presided over cases involving defendants accused of misdeeds like heroin smuggling, murder, extortion, and terrorism. He sat on the cases of two men who were associated with the Sri Lankan separatist group, the Tamil Tigers. More recently, he oversaw the case of Najibullah Zazi, an Afghan immigrant who went to high school in Queens and who pleaded guilty last year to conspiring to carry out a Qaeda plot to detonate a bomb in the New York subway.

Some of the cases he handled, though, have involved defendants who appeared more desperate than dangerous.

The man, Gilbert Terrero, admitted taking the jewels from a bag inside a British Airways jet at Kennedy International Airport, then hiding his haul in an empty video-game cartridge inside his parent’s house in South Ozone Park.

Calling Mr. Terrero a misguided but “decent fellow,” Judge Dearie sentenced him to four years of probation. At the same time, he indicated that there were limits to his leniency, jokingly warning that if he ever saw Mr. Terrero in a courtroom again, the jewel thief would soon be in need of medical attention.

Judge Dearie said he came to value the collegiality he found on the bench in Brooklyn.

“The Eastern District is a very special place,” he said. “Those of us who have been fortunate enough to work here have tended to stay.”

Firm merger

Kelley Drye & Warren is expanding its reach toward the West Coast, announcing this week that it would merge with the Los Angeles-based litigation firm White O’Connor Fink & Brenner.

The new Los Angeles office will open as Kelley Drye/White O’Connor. White O’Connor specializes in business and entertainment industry litigation. Kelley Drye, founded in 1836, also has offices in New York, Washington, Chicago, Stamford, Conn., and Parsippany, N.J.

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